See that you do too
by Kasan Soulblade
Summary: When Elmyra let the sharp dressed suit into her home she could never have expected that he was searching for a girl so like her own that they could have been twins.


See that you do...

_A/N: Story info: A one shot, a Tseng Elmyra centered ficlet. Slightly out of canon, but it occured when I was trying to novelize the original scene, and I like it so I thought I'd post it._

He stood before her, arms behind his back, back stiff, he stared straight ahead. Black on black, his hair was an off shade of coal; his eyes were the hue of a pit. Framed around by such somber hues he looked sickly, but his muscular build bellied that paleness and turned his ill seeming hue into little more than a lie. His voice was commanding, though gentle, and it was testament to the man's force of personality that Elmyra even let him in.

She ushered him in, he seemed ill inclined to enter without her blessings, and that odd custom coupled with his natural pallor made her leery.

She thought whimsically of vampires even as he smiled, and she saw with relief that he had no fangs.

His grin was a flash of pure white on an off white, it came quick and left just as fast. Bowing over her offered hand he took the limb and entwined it with gentle fingers. One kiss upon her knuckles with dry lips, one moment spent looking up upon her to gauge her reaction... He had caught her off her guard, and she saw with distaste that this had all been coldly planed to ferret out her real reaction. Those squinted up in the corner, demon eyes, met her own. Reading the nascence of her thoughts from posture he coolly dropped her hand and stood.

Still he did so with a chuckled, a warm wry sound that coiled in his throat and seemed to become tangled into a purring noise.

Damn Wutian bastard, her lips wanted to curl in distaste. She'd lost her husband to those alien murderers and she'd do nothing more than show this suited one of their own to her front door...

"Mrs. Gainsborough." His voice had the hissing quality of his native tongue, the man's native language was a filthy thing of barks and hisses that fumbled through civilized Continental and came out half mangled. His accent was minimal, but she wasn't set at her ease by that fact. Quite the opposite, in fact. A snake in the bushes barely had a lisp, though its bite was undoubtedly deadly. "It is an honor to meet you at long last."

Deciding to be a better woman than this _thing_ was a man Elmyra merely set her hands on her hips and glared up at him. He was a tall man, almost a head above her own, but she wasn't going to let mere height shake her one bit.

"If you're working for that young Urban Development suit then you can just turn on your heel and go out my door. I'm not moving, and neither are the neighbors."

"I'm not here to ask you to move. I merely have come to ask you to take more care."

"I beg your pardon? Is this some sort of threat, because I've half a mind to show you the skillet face first if you think you're going to shake me into moving out."

Instead of rising his hands in mock surrender and making a hasty exit as that young blue suited boy who'd come down last month had, the black suited man only smiled. Lifting one hand, he stared at his own sleeve, black eyes vague, unfocused, as they traced the pattern less garment. Then, done marveling over the fact he was clad in black, the man met her gaze.

"I forget, civilians see us as all the same. Yes, one suit is much the same as another in the public's mind... Allow me to counter your confusion, Mrs. Gainsborough. I am not a suit, nor am I a businessman connected to the Shinra corporation. I am a Turk."

Elmyra froze, her snarky comment that had formed on the tip of her tongue withered and died even as her eyes bugged out and her mouth sagged open. The Turk's had a vile reputation, jokingly they were called the bad boys of Shinra, but the truth was far worse. They were the executive branch's pet murderers, the president's right hand killers. Above the law, the answered to no one, save the man with the fattest wallet.

Ignoring Elmyra's reaction -for he was used to one's like it, and those far worse- the Turk turned his black eyes from her. He stared out her kitchen window. White framed holding three whole plates of glass and one had been shattered long ago. The view was green touched of a dirt drive way for a non existent car, the house had been built when this place hadn't been part of the slums, and it was obvious that Elmyra did her best to maintain her abodes old status. She did her best, but her best wasn't good enough, with no finances to back her her best would eventually become synominous to failure. The paint was peeling outside, the roof's shingles needed to be changed, and the 'borrowed' lengths of steel that were currently serving as substitutes did little more than block sunlight.

"My name is Tseng, I'm a Turk in the employ of Shinra. I'm currently on a... long running mission, a task that could take years to complete, for my target is very canny indeed. I've been sent to look for a child, to find her and bring her back to the suits whom you so despise. She's probably twelve this year, has brown hair, and eyes that are mako green."

"Probably twelve?"

"Possibly." Tseng brushed past her, strode into the kitchen and took a seat upon one of the two chairs the house had to offer. Quietly Elmyra followed, taking the chair across from him. She was not even sure as to why she did so, why she was even listening to this man. He waited in silence for Elmyra to situate herself, his eyes refusing to meet hers. He traced the frayed fringe that rimmed the table covering. "The scientists in the lab were... inadequate in dealing with children. They didn't mark her years, only her growth. And then those were told in terms of 'bone structure and biological system development'." The man's thin lips twisted in distaste, his demon squint eyes followed suit and became mere slits. "As I said, they were... inadequate in their dealings with children, more so with the child's mother. She died." He eyes met hers then. The darkness in them was intense, and it bored into her. Silently weighting, silently warning... "In the slums, at the train station." He added the last for clarification.

Elmyra shivered for that story, this Turk's story was that of her daughter... Her Aries, the young child she'd found the girl in the slums, at the train station...

"I believe," Tseng said with utmost care, "that we now understand each other, and what I must eventually come to claim?"

"If you even dare-" Elmyra leapt to her feet, her slender hands clenched into fists.

"The key word, Mrs. Gainsborough, is _eventually_." Quietly the Turk pushed the chair behind him. His expression was part mocking part scolding. "Don't forget the emphasis. I've no love of the labs, and neither does that girl who disappeared so long ago. Until Arieth makes herself openly known I won't see her, or hear of her. But... I felt you must be warned, just in case."

"My daughter... her name is Aries."

Tseng's response was a gesture, a sharp sweep of one hand thought the air. The move -if it was made to banish her fears- did nothing of the sort. Elmyra shivered, and admitted that for the first time she was scared for herself as well as scared for her daughter. Tseng stood then, seemingly satisfied with his days work, he took to his feet and went to her door. At the threshold he stopped, turned to face her a final time.

"I'm not a cruel man unless it's necessary to be cruel. Understand this, I have a child of my own, maybe not of my flesh and blood, but like you, I've learned that flesh and blood really don't mean a thing. I'm doing my part, Mrs. Gainsborough, see to it that you do too."

He slammed the door behind him, an unexplainable burst of rage that marred the surface of their seemingly tranquil meeting. His action was like tossing a stone into a still body of water. The ripples from the motion were dark crested waves over a midnight hued pond, and call it image, or call it emphasis, whatever you will, the whole idea set her to shivering...


End file.
